Historical Fiction Finalist:The 2016 Awards from AwardsForStories.
In 1863 on the tiny island of Key West, Yankee spy Aaron Matthews must find and eliminate a deadly Rebel saboteur whom he fears just may be the woman he loves.
ILLUSTRATION: Old Florida shack like that of Noah Lewis.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Aaron is on his way to question a drayman who used loose diamonds to make a purchase at Curry's store. Is the drayman being paid by a Rebel spy to send messages via pigeon to the Confederate fleet in Havana harbor?
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Inside Noah Lewis's shack, birds cooed and rustled. Aaron Matthews emerged from the tropical greenery running rampant around the sun-bleached building and knocked on the door. No answer.
"Noah Lewis?" Aaron knocked harder, and the door swung away from him. He looked, but there was no person opening it. He pushed the door open wider. "Noah Lewis?"
On the floor beside a wall of pigeon cages lay a black man with a knife hilt protruding from a blood-soaked shirtfront.
"Noah—," Aaron began. A shadow crossed his back. An object slammed into the back of Aaron's head with a solid thwump he never even heard. Aaron Matthews dropped like an anchor, unconscious.
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It was only mid-afternoon, and William Curry appeared agitated as he shoved a "Closed" sign into the window and hastily drew the shades. Then he retreated to the back of his store.
Curry bustled to where Aaron Matthews sat slumped miserably over a cluttered desk—Curry's own. Aaron was conscious, but he looked like everything including his hair and eyelashes were hurting.
"I don't know how you made it here without being seen," said Curry, skittering about the room.
"I wouldn't have if Sandy hadn't come along with that produce cart," Aaron said.
The hulking Sandy Cornish entered through Curry's back door with a bucket of water. "You lucky that no-account owed me money, else I wouldn't go nowhere near Noah Lewis's place. No tellin' who mighta found you, or when. What you want with trash like Noah?"
Sandy produced a cloth from a deep pocket in his mammoth trousers and, using the freshly drawn water, made a cool compress, which he applied to the back of Aaron's head.
